I’ve been seriously tempted to splurge some dosh on getting a Mac Mini. Without doubt, if I was starting from scratch TODAY, this is the system I would start from – alongside a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse.
But what specification would I choose, and what other accessories would I purchase. That’s the second part of this post.
After doing quite a bit of reading, and watching several reviews (see references at end), I have determined that for me (and I stress, for me), that the first decision that can be made is that the M4 Pro chip is way over the top for me, so that just leaves RAM and Disk Storage as a decision to make.
My MacBook Pro (2021 – M1 chip) is doing just fine, and that’s the real reason why spending money at this time is just not a sensible option, and it has 32Gb RAM. I often have several applications open at the same time when editing photos as well as Lightroom Classic – Topaz, Photoshop, Safari, and others. Having the “headroom” to know I can easily swap between them without delay (once they’re loaded) is important. So the first decision is an easy one – my MacMini should have 32Gb RAM.
The other decision to make is how much SSD storage do I need. When I purchased the MacBook Pro I imagined this would be a machine that would last me a very long-time, and so I decided that maxing up on internal storage “would be a good thing”. Wrong on a number of counts. Firstly, I really hadn’t worked out in my mind how I would use iCloud storage (I have 2.2Tb of storage – currently even in an Apple Family scenario it’s only 1.2Tb “full”). Secondly I had no sight of the incredible innovation in offline fast SSD disks, including those using NVMe technology (more later).
I recently purchased this 1Tb external SSD from Crucial for c.£99 – it does read/write at incredible speeds of 2,100 MB/s – certainly fast enough to read or write an image bearing in mind that my fast SD cards only r/w at 300MB/s. So having a large amount of internal SSD storage now doesn’t seem so essential – especially given Apple’s insanely high upgrade costs. So instead of the 2TB of internal storage (I must have been mad!) in the MacBook Pro, I think 512Gb SSD would be ample.
So we would have this Mac Mini, 2024 costing TODAY from Apple – £1199
Apple M4 chip with 10‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
32GB unified memory
512GB SSD storage
Gigabit Ethernet
Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, two USB‑C ports, headphone jack
If I wanted to save cash, I would drop the SSD to 256Gb and save £200.
The next piece of kit I’d need would be a monitor. What do I particularly require? Good colour reproduction comes top of the list, with Adobe RGB compatibility as a possibility, Thunderbolt connectivity (better than HDMI for working with the Mac systems) and a good working relationship with Mac hardware.
Although the Dell Ultrasharp range would be a very sound choice, as would monitors from Asus, I’ve been very happy with the BenQ monitor I purchased to work with the MacBook Pro as a desktop system, so I would stick with them and with Wex Photovideo who I purchased the monitor from. Some in the range have a specific M-mode to ensure the best mirroring from a MacBook display. It makes sense to get that compatibility if available, even with the Mac Mini.
The monitor I have is the BenQ PD2725U 27 inch 4K UHD Thunderbolt 3 Monitor and it cost me then £899; the price has now dropped to £698 (on Amazon). However there are other BenQ monitors in the range and you can explore the BenQ and Wex Photovideo sites to see the current ranges and see prices on Amazon. You might also take a glance at this one – the MA 270U – which has a good review, or this one – the SW242Q (if you want a 24″ monitor).
So you have the Mac Mini, a monitor, keyboard and mouse, what else? Well although the MacMini is well equipped with ports, none of them are USB-A ports, and there’s no SD-Card slot – two deficiencies that I would have to rectify.
I can do that in one of two ways. I could use a docking station like the one I use with the MacBook Pro – the CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub – which is just great (but currently unavailable but look at any in the range from CalDigit, Sabrent, OWC or UGREEN), or an alternative which is in many ways much more aesthetically pleasing (ie tidy) – a MacMini Hub, of which there a couple, but take a look at this one – I love it!
There are others on Amazon. None of them are Thunderbolt 3/4 yet, so I might wait a bit – they will be more expensive when they arrive, but could be worth the wait, because you can install that NVMe SSD RAM in them – a really cost-saving move for more storage. [Even if you can’t wait and have run out of storage, this Hub should be a good purchase – but it doesn’t appear to be available yet in the UK.]
The alternative is to buy an NVMe Enclosure and put a SSD NVMe card (from Crucial or Samsung) in it and hook it up to the MacMini directly. That’s a really earth-shattering and cheaper alternative to Apple storage, but again make sure you’re looking at 40GB/s transfer or Thunderbolt 3/4. I can recommend UGREEN kit.
Video Reviews of Mac Mini
The last one almost echoes my thoughts, but I think her original decision to go with 24Gb RAM on the MacBook Pro, was wrong!!
In hopefully a final note on the way that Apple Photos and Google Photos work together (or not as the text below describes); I’ve now worked out what I hope is the best (and final) strategy of how I should use the two of them together.
Apple Photos on the mobile device is the master, thus this is where you look to reduce your storage load. I’ve just deleted hundreds of photos from all my iCloud Photos (on all devices that sync. to iCloud) by a massive 8.6Gb per device. You delete on one device it deletes on all devices, and iCloud as well – but you do get 30days grace to change your mind.
The Google Photos app looks at the Photos and Albums you’ve uploaded to the your Google storage and peeks at what’s on your Camera Roll on your mobile device (see below).
Therefore I think the best strategy to use both together is to create Albums on Google Photos, and upload photos to them – so that you can share them, and prune Apple Photos as required. That will have NO IMPACT on any albums you’ve created in Google Photos.
You might think that you could create Albums in Apple and share them, but if you delete any photos to reduce space on your device, you will also remove them from the Album – as far as I can tell. That may not be what you want!!!
This post is a sequel to the article (see link below) that I wrote in November, and reflects a little more of what I’ve learnt about the crazy world of how Apple Photos and Google Photos interact (or work) with each other. I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last.
This one starts from an observation I made this morning that some recent photos I’d taken with my iPhone and which were in my Photos Library also seemed to have been added to Google Photos on my iPhone (but not my iPad) as well. From the outset let me assure you that this is the normal behaviour. You have to set Google Photos to see all the photos in your local Photos Library {Settings > Google Photos > Allow Google Photos to Access – All Photos} otherwise it can’t work. What you are seeing in Google Photos is the app getting a view of what’s in your Camera Roll on the iPhone/iPad – you haven’t added anything at this stage to the Google Photos app, and more importantly, nothing has been uploaded to Google Photos at photos.google.com.
What I did see however additionally in Google Photos were some edits of recent photos that I’d done in Lightroom which I’d exported to my desktop, and then uploaded to photos.google.com. They could be identified by the little cloud icon on the picture.
It got me to thinking; what is the best way of sending photos from the iPhone/iPad to Google Photos – if I don’t want to sync everything using Google Backup (which as I explained in the previous post, I most certainly don’t want to do as they’ve already been backed up to iCloud). Am I doing it the best way?
Method 1
As above. Share (export) the photo from the iPhone/iPad to a chosen folder in the Files app or Google Drive, and then upload from that folder to Google Photos from photos.google.com (see also Method 3).
Upload from iPhone/iPad Camera Roll to a variety of services
Method 2
This is by far the easiest, and simplest way (and believe it or not I didn’t know you could do this). Open the Google Photos app on the iPhone, select a photo and then select the Upload (cloud) icon …
… the photo will be backed up to Google Photos (and photos.google.com); you will also note (see above) that once you’ve done that the Upload (cloud) icon is removed from the screen. In the Google Photos app, the photo will now have a cloud icon. Simple, eh!
Method 3
You can do the process in reverse. Go to photos.google.com and select Upload. You will be offered a variety of options …
An upload to photos.google.com from the Safari browser on my iPad
Choose (in this case) Tablet – as I was using my iPad to get the screenshots and you will get this dialogue …
Choose Google Drive and you will get this dialogue …
Choosing an image you’ve uploaded to Google Drive
Choose Copy from other services and you will get these options …
From which you can see (something else that I’ve learnt), that you can copy from iCloud – where all my iPhone photos are backed-up – to Google Photos. Duh!!!
What a wonderful (and complicated) world Google Photos is, and think – this was just prompted by me seeing photos in the Google Photos app I knew I hadn’t “uploaded” to Google Photos. Rest assured, they’re just views into the Apple Photos Library, not copies!!!
